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CLAD IN ILL-FITTING SWIM TRUNKS and a faded T-shirt, Bruce Wilkinson stepped gingerly into a small swimming pool late one May night in Namibia. "Oh, that's cold," Wilkinson said as he began an impromptu baptismal service for two white Namibians under an inky African sky. The two women had been baptized as infants into the Dutch Reformed church, a small Calvinist denomination in Namibia. But they had decided to be baptized again as adults by immersion, following in the footsteps of their husbands, both of whom are evangelical lay leaders. Such rebaptisms for bona fide church members are all but forbidden among most Protestant groups, including the Dutch Reformed.

"I know you believe God loves you," Wilkinson said to one of the women before baptizing her. "But do you believe God likes you?" A long pause ensued. The woman then broke into tears and nodded her head. Wilkinson baptized her as her family and friends applauded. He had helped yet another believer make a breakthrough.

The spiritual breakthrough has become the signature feature of Wilkinson's burgeoning global ministry. The news media have put the spotlight on his fabulously successful books, his new partnership with World Vision in the HIV/AIDS battle, and his stunning and unexpected relocation to Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002.

Such coverage looks at Wilkinson's achievements in isolation. Earlier this year, Wilkinson invited Christianity Today to travel with him, and I spent several days in May getting a more integrated picture of his ministry. I also interviewed Wilkinson outside Johannesburg, where he now lives with his wife, Darlene Marie, and their teenage daughter. Wilkinson's son, David, relocated to Johannesburg with his wife and two children in 2002 to work with Wilkinson's Walk Thru the Bible Ministries.

Wilkinson is one of a potent handful of evangelical leaders, including Rick Warren (Saddleback Church) and Richard Stearns (World Vision), who are convinced that Africa, especially Christian-majority southern Africa, is becoming a crucible for 21st century Christianity. Their focus on southern Africa is as much a strategic choice as it is driven by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

"If you live in the West, there are no ongoing structural reasons that force people's attention to Africa," Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom, told me in a recent interview. "We cannot ignore the Middle East. We cannot ignore Korea or China. We can afford to ignore Africa. Please don't hear that in a cynical way. There are no particular reasons why Westerners have to pay attention to Africa, except when they feel like it."

Bruce Wilkinson feels like it. "God ripped open our chest, took out our heart, dug a hole in Africa, put it in, covered it with soil and said, 'Now, follow your heart and move down to Africa,' " he told me. Wilkinson's relocation doesn't fit neatly into the career foreign missionary model, but the relocation to Africa of a successful Western Christian is not without precedent. Some, such as renowned theologian and musicologist Albert Schweitzer, move to Africa and achieve even greater glory, while others launch hospitals, schools, or other ministries to lesser acclaim.

In Wilkinson's case, his new organization, Global Vision Resources, with offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Johannesburg's high-tech Dimension Data corporate campus, provide a potent platform for networking. Wilkinson has kept one hand active at the bottom and the other at the top, from helping a remote desert village get a borehole drilled for drinking water to meeting with six African heads of state.

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November 2003, Vol. 47, No. 11